Consumer Spend on iOS / Google Play Games Larger than Dedicated Handhelds

Though there’s been a lot of anecdotal evidence implying that mobile gaming has outgrown dedicated handhelds like the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita, now we have some concrete evidence. Without providing any raw numbers, a report from App Annie and International Data Corporation proclaims that combined spending on iOS and Google Play games was larger than spending on all dedicated handheld software in Q4 2012.

Again, the report doesn’t say by how much (probably because it’s working with loose estimates), but the bar graphs make it look like mobile spend just barely climbed over dedicated handhelds. It’s not a landslide, yet anyway.

There are a few other interesting bits popping out of the report. For instance, Google Play has a larger share of the consumers that actually spend money, but the total amount of money spent on games is much higher on iOS. The conclusion is pretty natural — people spend more money on a per-person basis on iOS purchases, but there are simply more people visiting the Google Play store. I’m not sure which is better.

Another note, Android adoption is far outpacing iOS adoption, thanks to the platform’s ubiquity in South Korea and Japan.

Finally, in what shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, Nintendo software dominates the dedicated software market, taking all five of the top five highest grossing spots. Pokemon Black & White 2 are king of the heap, followed by New Super Mario Bros. 2 and Animal Crossing: New Leaf which hasn’t even released outside of Japan yet.

That’s no surprise really, everyone has a smartphone nowadays, only gamers have handheld devices, it’s obvious that the former would outsell the later simply because the insane amount of people buying games like Angry Birds to play on the loo.